THE RATIONAL ANIMALS FILE: The Others showed symptoms of True Belief!

But then, so did We Over Here: To appearances, many rational animals had little trouble deciding who to believe.

On Sunday morning, September 30, some of these “rationals” called C-Span's Washington Journal. They believed that Kavanaugh was telling the truth. They didn't believe Blasey Ford.

As we noted last Wednesday and then again Thursday, these callers didn't strike us as being enormously rational. There was no apparent basis on which they could be sure that Blasey Ford's account was false. But they seemed to be callers from the Trump right—and they seemed inclined to express "true belief" in the player who played for their side.

This behavior is less than perfectly rational, but it's extremely common “human” behavior. Indeed, such behavior even occurs Over Here, within our own liberal tribe.

Did Kavanaugh assault Blasey Ford, in the manner she has described, when she was just 15? If you gave us money and told us to bet, we would bet that he did—but we can’t say we’d be sure.

We'd bet that Blasey Ford's account is accurate, but we can't say we know it is. Nor do we agree with what Jennifer Granholm said on CNN's Cuomo Prime Time, four days after Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford testified.

Granholm is very smart. In our view, she's one of the brightest pundits or politicians you'll ever see on TV.

Granholm graduated from Harvard Law School; she was elected governor of Michigan twice. Despite these problems, she's very sharp—but we don't agree with this statement, which came to us, live and direct, from one of our tribe's most dominant scripts over the past few weeks:

GRANHOLM (10/1/18): The part that's so frustrating about this is that we have a woman who gets up there and takes an oath and who comes across to most people as incredibly credible. I'm not sure that's the right thing to say, but as amazingly credible.

Let's be fair! In that statement, Granholm described how Blasey Ford "came across to most people." She didn't say how Blasey Ford had seemed to her—to Granholm herself.

That said, we can assume that Granholm was also describing her own view of Blasey Ford's testimony. One day before, on the September 30 State of the Union, she had described Blasey Ford as "the most credible witness we could possibly have."

We definitely don't agree with that statement. Indeed, it strikes us as utterly daft.

Was Blasey Ford "the most credible witness we could possibly have?" That statement strikes us as daft. That doesn't mean that Blasey Ford's allegations were false. But it does mean this:

In our view, Granholm's statement helps show that our tribe exhibited symptoms of true belief in the course of this ugly episode. Those C-Span callers displayed True Belief, but so did we, Over Here.

Was Blasey Ford "the most credible witness we could possibly have?" Perhaps through no fault of Blasey Ford', the assessment is absurd on its face, as anyone can see on perhaps ten seconds' reflection.

We'll proceed to that question tomorrow. For today, let's consider the ugliness of this debate, and the nature of true belief.

In our view, the bulk of the ugliness in this debate came from—who else?—Donald Trump.

At various points in the past several weeks, Trump somehow managed to rein in his demented, disordered instincts. He even said, one day after Blasey Ford testified, that he found her testimony "very compelling" and “very credible.”

To Trump, she seemed like a very fine woman. This was Trump’s fuller statement, from a Rose Garden press event:

TRUMP (9/28/18): I thought her testimony was very compelling, and she looks like a very fine woman to me. A very fine woman.

And I thought that Brett's testimony, likewise, was really something that I haven't seen before. It was incredible. It was an incredible moment, I think, in the history of our country.

But certainly she was a very credible witness. She was very good in many respects.

Trump said that Blasey Ford’s testimony was “very credible.” He said that Kavanaugh’s testimony was “incredible,” though he probably didn’t mean it that way.

As he continued, he said he hadn’t considered withdrawing his nomination of Kavanaugh, “not even a little bit.” He wasn’t asked to explain the possible contradictions in this various things he had said.

Trump was on his best behavior during large chunks of this process. But before and after that Rose Garden session, he engaged in his standard ugly behavior. He snarked at Blasey Ford’s “loving parents;” he mocked Blasey Ford herself for things she says she can’t remember, misstating basic facts as he did.

That was Standard Trump. Through twenty-six years of incompetent, sub-rational and frequently dishonest behavior, leading stars of our own liberal tribe worked to create the situation in which he now sits in the Oval Office, having filled two seats (so far) on the Supreme Court.

Rational animals within our own liberal rank and file still don’t understand the facts of this ugly, 26-year process. (We’re dating it from January 1992 through November 2018.) However rational we liberals may be, we’re also amazingly easy to fool, as are many rational animals in The Other Tribe.

On Sunday morning, September 30, rational animals from Trump’s own tribe flooded C-Span with phone calls expressing their true belief. That said, they’d heard a lot of things from their tribal news orgs which we liberals had been sheltered from Over Here, within our own tribal news orgs.

Those callers had been given lots of reasons, some of them sensible, to doubt Blasey Ford’s account. They’d also been given many reasons to disregard the various things our own liberal leaders were saying, some of which bordered on daft or perhaps dishonest.

Within this ugly, stupid context, one of our smartest leaders appeared on CNN and made an implausible statement about Balsey Ford. For the rest of the week, we’ll be exploring the ways our own tribe has failed.

Warning! The Others have been told about the ways our leaders failed. As we've watched our darlings Rachel and Lawrence, we liberals have been kept in the dark—propagandized, to employ a key word.

Plato didn’t believe in rule by us the rabble. Those calls to C-Span buttressed his point—but so did a great deal of conduct Over Here in our own sub-rational tribe.

71 comments:

Anywho: you and your demigoddess Jennifer Granholm need to get out more often. Out of the lib-zombie death-cult environment, into the real world, and talk to some normal, life people there. Try it sometime, Bob.

"who comes across to most people as incredibly credible. I'm not sure that's the right thing to say, but as amazingly credible."

Granholm, being intelligent, didn't like the combination of the word "incredible" applied to "credible" so she changed it to "amazingly credible". Somerby objects because of the lack of perfect knowledge. But it is pretty amazing when even the partisan opponents are acknowledging the credibility of Ford's testimony, even our President says so, against his interests. That qualifies as amazing, even if there is nothing inherent to Ford's statement that would make it amazing.

Somerby wants nothing less than a videotape, and even that can be edited, not show the whole truth, present a distorted angle or be indistinct in some way. Even that is imperfect testimony. So Somerby won't believe even this woman who is still suffering because of coming forward, still not able to live in her home due to death threats. He doesn't bother to think about what exactly made Ford's testimony credible to people on both sides of this issue. In the absence of perfect witness, he doesn't care about that. Now it is time to smear Granholm, a rising star among Democrats, for commenting on how credible Ford was in an imperfect way.

Awhile back someone mentioned that on the left, the purity forces undermine Democrat interests. Here is a perfect example. Somerby thinks it is OK for him to perch himself on the shoulders of activists and criticize their efforts on the basis of tiny nitpicks (adjectives like amazing vs incredible) because Democrats are imperfect and don't meet his purity standards. Whatever Democrats do is wrong in Somerby's eyes. Then he claims to be liberal. No. Somerby, you are not any friend of liberal politicians or causes. And if you cannot see that Blasey Ford's testimony was unusually credible and yet set aside by conservatives, you are living on the moon and don't have any place in this discourse.

But it does seem to me that the Senate Democrats did not do that. They simply thought the matter needed a thorough investigation, which the Republicans weren't interested in.

Now, the reactions of the press, the TV pundits, the public....those can be criticized. Somerby at least acknowledges that "both sides" tend to do this. But without a real examination and comparison of the arguments and presentations being made by both sides, I'm not in a position to say if one is as bad or as unreasonable as the other.

About #metoo in general: I'm not sure it's a purely liberal thing. I imagine some conservative women have spoken out in this regard. The initial high profile accusations were against people like Weinstein, Lauer, Rose, i.e. not identifiable as "Republicans." Even Al Franken resigned in the wake of it. So, it isn't used as a tribal weapon to punish Republicans.

Also, just from personal experience, all the women that I know, including my 85-year-old mother, have told me stories of being sexually assaulted, and they never reported the incidents to their parents or the police.

A man’s foremost interest should be his work. A woman's work and business is her man. I know it sounds like a convenient philosophy of the selﬁsh male when I say that. But marriage means a home. And home is like a nest— where there is not enough room for both birds at once. One sits inside, the other perches on the edge and looks about and attends to all outside business.

Some women are strong and others aren't. Same as men. Remember the bell curve? Women want a chance to do what they can do, just as men are allowed to do. Men are more desperately anxious to prove their strength than women. That's why they won't let women participate. As long as women are held back, men can always console themselves that at least they're more capable than women.

Men will hold back and not let participate other men too. That is your giant disconnect. It's a game of power as it always has been and both sexes are held back. Poorly educated feminists like yourself who have no knowledge of history or anthropology and think men should (or could) just set aside their instincts for power and domination to give someone else a chance to "do what they can do" is hopelessly naïve and flies in the face of the entire history of mankind. If you want to show your strength and capability, you have to do it by force. You have to take it. No one is going to give it to you. When has that ever happened in the history of mankind?

Maybe we can just lead all the capable women into the highest halls of power where a ceremony is performed and the men who have slaughtered, pillaged and killed to get their power and maintain their power can, over cucumber sandwiches and pink champagne,cede this power so as to give all the capable women a chance to do what they can do. I mean really, what is it that you want? You want a law to be passed? Some sort of peaceful transfer of power? What on Earth are you thinking? Where were you born? What do you know about the world and history? What is it that you want? How do you envision women being given a chance? Who is the person that is going to give them the chance? You are waiting for someone else, outside yourself, to give you power? Bitch pull your head out of your ass. That is a fairytale. You want power girl, you have to take it. You have to take it by force. That is the way of the world. So do it. You want someone to come along and give you "a chance"? Good luck. It doesn't work that way. You want to chance? You take it through your own cunning, guile and capabilities. Life is a power game. No one gives it to you. You have to take it so take it. Until then, shut the fuk up get back in the kitchen and cook and clean.

"Women want a chance to....." Anyone saying that in 2018 in America has bigger problems than their distorted notion of oppression. Man up, lady. A woman just won enough votes in number to win the presidency. Thank god for the electoral college but that should tell any intelligent woman it's time to stop whining and act to do whatever it is you want to do. This is feminism?

You wanted equal opportunities for women and you got equal opportunities for women but now you want statistical equality of achievements by women. You will never be satisfied until you have complete control over all systems at which time you will behave exactly as the male power structures you criticize now behave. You're a boring dumb fuck. Stop complaining and find your place in the world.

Women resonated to Ford's experience because they have had similar experiences with men. That gave it an additional credibility that men don't share. So, it is not surprising that Somerby doesn't understand this situation very well.

When conservatives treated Ford's testimony as a political ploy, a made-up accusation, many women recognized the dismissal such claims always bring. Women are very angry about how Ford was treated (not the courtesy but the failure to investigate) and their anger is amplified by their own past experiences. This isn't solely political and it isn't going away. Women are a very large constituency crossing party lines.

If Republicans wanted to shoot themselves in the foot politically speaking, they couldn't have found a better way to do it. Trump may think he is bullet proof, but there may be limits to his power to manipulate and corrupt our systems using money and blackmail. Because women have been largely excluded from power, they are particularly immune to Trump and conservative inducements of the kind that co-opted Susan Collins. Like Stormy Daniels (who Somerby also misunderstands and dismisses), there isn't much you can do to female activists and they will persist.

The question at this blog is why Somerby, a supposed liberal, is siding with conservatives against women's concerns. Now he is attacking Granholm, someone likely to emerge as leadership in 2020. Why would someone who is supposedly not Republican be doing that? I can't find any credible reason.

"If Republicans wanted to shoot themselves in the foot politically speaking, they couldn't have found a better way to do it."

The Dems just falsely accused a judicial nominee of organized drugging and gang-rape on the Senate floor based on the word of a known con artist, right before he was confirmed as the conservative majority vote. STEP OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE, IDIOT!

She was Attorney General and then Governor of Michigan. She was also Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law School Law Review, no mean accomplishment for someone supposedly not intelligent. Don't let her looks fool you.

Actually Trump's criticism was fairly accurate. She was unable to remember various key details, as he mockingly pointed out. IMHO what made Trump's criticism ugly was that, somehow, a taboo had been created that Ford could not be criticized. We were not supposed to mention that she might be lying or have mental problems. Meanwhile, there was no restriction on even the most atrocious accusations against Kavenaugh. Trump violated the taboo against criticizing Ford.

@12:43 -- We didn't hear this sort of criticism of Ford from mainstream media or from Republican Senators. OTOH Democratic Senators and mainstream media did repeat the most preposterous criticisms of Kavenaugh.

@david:And what, pray tell, was the right wing media saying, Fox, Limbaugh, Drudge, Breitbart? You and Somerby refuse to call these "mainstream" even though their audiences are bigger than MSNBC, which, for some "unknown" reason is supposed to be mainstream. And of course you make unproven assertions. Apparently, any criticism of Kavanaugh by a Democrat is "preposterous" no matter how defensible it is.

I had a friend whose wife had an almost certainly false recovered memory of being molested by an uncle. Her bad psychotherapy broke up the marriage and harmed their children. My friend was given terrible advice from her shrink -- that if the event was true for his wife he should make it true for him.

Ford remembering this event decades later and getting many details wrong suggests to me that a false recovered memory is not unbelievable.

Yes, this all probably happened in the 80s before psychotherapy cleaned up its act. If it is still happening, it is malpractice and proves nothing whatsoever about Blasey Ford, especially since she had couples therapy, not therapy for her abuse.

There are many many people who correctly remember previously forgotten memories in situations where details are verifiable (e.g., police reports at the time, etc). Deciding to treat all memories as unreliable is not fair to those abused.

Mainstream media propaganda works, because those accepting it want to believe it.These regressive nitwits don't come here to tell me they believe in nonsense like Bigfoot, etc. They come here to tell me that black people and women are ruining the world. You have to be receptive to this kind o nonsense (bigotry) before Tucker Carlson and the rest of the the charlatans in the mainstream media propagandize.

*************Specifically, Trump falsely claimed that, during her Sept. 27 testimony, Ford did not know what year the alleged attack occurred (she said the summer of 1982), whether the alleged attack happened upstairs or downstairs (she said in a bedroom upstairs) and the neighborhood where it occurred (she said in the Bethesda area).

She actually testified it was a house located somewhere between the country club and her house. This one fact could have been easily checked to compare to the house he named on his calendar where he was having his 'skis on July 1.

**************In addition to recalling what year the alleged attack occurred, where in the house it occurred and what town it occurred in, Ford gave specific details about the night of the alleged attack that Trump ignored.

She said who was at the party. “Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, a boy named P.J., and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I also remember my friend Leland attending,” Ford testified, referring to Patrick J. Smyth and Leland Ingham Keyser. All four people named by Ford say they do not recall being at the party, as we have written before. Ford addressed this in her testimony.

“I don’t expect that P.J. and Leland would remember this evening,” Ford said during her testimony. “It was a very unremarkable party. It was not one of their more notorious parties, because nothing remarkable happened to them that evening. They were downstairs. And Mr. Judge is a different story. I would expect that he would remember that this happened.”

Here's an opinion from a liberal blogger. It sounds a bit paranoid, but it doesn't sound impossible. He predicts that the Deep State has done all sorts of bad things, and, he says, they're going to get nailed. Time will tell if he's right.

Good point, David. Regressives (what the MSM call "Conservatives") had problems listening to black people and women, long before Obama became their President, and Hillary ran for the office.BTW, David, the FBI isn't Trump's enemy. After all, he's "pro-policing" and a "law and order" President. Are you saying the FBI is "anti-policing" and against "law and order"?

Back in the 60s, most liberals who were active in politics had FBI files and the left was targeted because of groups like the Weathermen and SLF. Now the violence comes from the right but it is unclear whether federal law enforcement is giving them the same level of scrutiny as the leftist bomb throwers of the 60s & 70s. It may be that the shift in seeing the FBI as an enemy of the right came with the rise of militias and the NRA's insistence that everyone conservative own lots of guns. But there has clearly been a shift. The FBI was always focused on taking down organized crime, but in the old days, the mob didn't own the government as blatantly as it does today. That's another change. So, the FBI didn't become Trump's enemy, it has always been the enemy of the mob. Then there is Russia...

So, no, to the extent that the FBI is doing its job and addressing wrongdoing wherever it finds it, it is not the enemy of the left and there has not been distrust on the left for a long time now, since the FBI stopped targeting leaders of leftist causes, in fact, since Hoover died, probably.

But distrust of the FBI has never been a plank in the Democratic platform but it clearly is part of the right's conspiracy theories and Q-Anon script and is voiced every time Trump talks about the Deep State.

The slightest bit of historical complexity and you get all confused, David. It must be very hard being you. (Obligatory empathy for the right demanded by Somerby)

@12:59 --I must disagree with your statement that "Now the violence comes from the right." Just within the last year, a Democrat with a rifle attempted to assassinate a group of Republican Congressmen who were playing baseball. Then a Democratic neighbor seriously injured a Republican Senator. Another Democrat with a knife attempted to assassinate a Republican candidate for Congress here in California. Then there's ANTIFA who are committed to violent methods. Just yesterday, they caused a near riot in Portland, OR and attacked people on the street.

Charlottesville, David. ----------Also, the NRA is a Right-wing lobbying organization (and on the Putin payroll, but I digress), and they believe it is a Second Amendment right to fight the tyranny of the government by shooting police officers.Funny (not really) you omitted that.

@9:17 Here are a few quotes from an earlier post on that site. They demonstrate his generally liberal POV.

Corporate tyranny: The nation is groaning under despotic corporate rule. The fragility of these operations is moving toward criticality. As with shale oil, they depend largely on dishonest financial legerdemain....

Climate change is most immediately affecting farming. 2018 will be a year of bad harvests in many parts of the world. Agri-biz style farming, based on oil-and-gas plus bank loans is a ruinous practice, and will not continue in any case....

Pervasive racketeering rules because we allow it to, especially in education and medicine. Both are self-destructing under the weight of their own money-grubbing schemes....

the reach and scope of US imperial arrangements has to be reduced. It’s happening already, whether we like it or nothttp://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-uncomfortable-hiatus/

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